Teaching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof can help students relate to home life emotions such as family breakdowns, says Alex Quigley. Photograph: SNAP / Rex Features

Alex Quigley, English subject leader, Huntington School, York

I chose to teach Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams, to very different groups in terms of ability for their English literature GCSE because, like most teens in Britain today, my students were completely immersed in American culture: the dreams, the glamour and the falsehoods. Other English literature staples, like Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman, have been universally popular; so Williams' dark study of family breakdown, lies and illicit sexuality were sure to touch a nerve. Like a Jeremy Kyle show in the classroom, Cat always provokes debate, skilled emotional insights and it provides a window into a very recognisable world which never fails to hook students.

Both times I taught Cat I was working towards written coursework, both based on the central theme of mendacity. Obviously, the play also provided me with fertile opportunities for dramatic speaking and listening performances. In our contemporary era, when students in every class are impacted by family breakdowns and divorce, the key themes of lies, familial deceit and the taboo topics of illicit sex and power, really hit home with emotional force.

The taboo topic of the potential homosexuality of the character Brick was the one topic that I approached with some initial trepidation. With a very mixed group of boys and girls, more interested in rugby and their make-up respectively, I taught Cat for the first time. I approached the homosexuality topic with candid directness (unlike Williams) - cue palpable unease among my boys. The alpha male of the group, rugby-loving and school-hating Jack, was particularly reticent. Within weeks Jack was leading the debate, hotly defending Brick and encouraging him to follow his feelings for Skipper. By the end of the play he was gagging for Brick to leave his harpy wife Maggie and find a good man, like a manic Alan Carr.

The play offers rich opportunities for debate and nuanced drama performances. From the aforementioned, and unremittingly funny, Jeremy Kyle-style group discussion to debates about the play as a metaphor for the cancer of American capitalism, the play provides rich material for teens to get their teeth into. From being sickened by Big Daddy's tale of child prostitution to being annoyed by Big Momma's annoying interruptions, before being saddened by Brick's irreversible breakdown, students were always emotionally involved in the play, and for great learning that emotional investment is pure gold.

Students love the realism of the play. I have had some more boisterous moments where students were desperate to unveil the cancer being suffered by Big Daddy. Any play that inspires a student to call out: "Why don't they tell him he has bloody cancer - just tell him!" with such vehemence that anyone would think the play was happening in her front room, has to be a hit. The ambiguous ending leaves them all on tenterhooks, with pleas for a sequel with the 'answers'. Any teacher will tell you the students are calling to read a sequel then the play has done the job.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof offers teachers and students a richly complex and deeply moral piece of theatre that speaks directly to the teens of today with understated eloquence and an unmistakably powerful emotional punch.

Jess Capstick and Sophie Grant, English teacher and head of English, The Crest Academies, Brent

We teach Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to our year 13 students for their A-level English literature coursework, not as a text in isolation but for a 3,000 word comparative study in which they must compare an element of Williams' presentation with that of Ian McEwan's Atonement and William Shakespeare's Othello. Not an easy task for any 17 or 18 year-old.

However, we ensure that we start with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as it is so accessible and the plot and themes seem universal; vibrant characters such as Maggie the Cat and Big Daddy and the overall themes of human vice and weakness seem to transcend time and unite even the most disparate of classes and reassure the most anxious of A2 students. One of our students this year pointed out that even Tennessee Williams reveals his weakness as a playwright at the end of the play when he provides two endings (one that he originally intended and one he rewrote at director Elia Kazan's request for the play's debut performance in 1955).

The symbolism in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is so rich that students are able to achieve sophisticated levels of analysis, regardless of their prior attainment: Brick's crutch, Maggie 'the cat' and Big Daddy's cancer are both vital to the audience's perception of the family in the play and symbolic of Williams' disillusionment with the American dream. When they can get their teeth into symbols and imagery, our students tend to approach the text and its layers of meaning eagerly. For example, a class debate recently on the importance of Williams' use of symbolism led to the class concluding that many of the symbols in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are intangible, which reinforces the themes of deceit and illusion and encourages conceptualisation at a word level basis.

One of the biggest challenges we faced in teaching the play was the students' feelings of depression and frustration during the reading and analysis of the play (not aided by asking them to read Atonement simultaneously). The three texts we study do not offer much hope. Williams in particular suggests that behind the intoxicating illusion of success, wealth and family unity, the stark reality is that life simply does not live up to this grandeur. One of our students, Zahra, suggested that everyone in life has their 'crutches', Brick's are just more obvious than the other characters and this encourages the audience to reflect on whether they have their own.

Ultimately, the students struggle with the endings of the three texts. Othello less so as it is a conventional Shakespearian tragedy. However Atonement has quite possibly one of the most frustrating last chapters of any novel we have read and similarly, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof does not achieve closure or allow its central characters to make peace in a way the students have ever encountered before. This, however, is the joy of teaching these texts; they are not easy, enjoyable, carefree texts. They make demands of the reader, they confront the reader's expectations of a traditional play or novel and therefore they ensure that our A2 students grow as critical, independent readers who are able to come to their own conclusions about the texts they study.

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The Guardian is teaming up with the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds for a series of articles, video, events and reader reviews of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Join the conversation – and help us reinvent theatre criticism